Writing is the most easy, pain-free,
and happy way to pass the time of all the arts. As I write this, for
example, I am sitting comfortable in my rose garden and typing on my new
computer. Each rose represents a story, so I'm never at a loss for what to
type. I just look deep into the heart of the rose, read its story, and
then write it down. I could be typing kjfiu joew.mv jiw and enjoy
it as much as typing words that actually make sense, because I simply
relish the movements of my fingers on the keys. It is true that sometimes
agony visits the head of a writer. At those moments, I stop writing and
relax with a coffee at my favorite restaurant, knowing that words can be
changed, rethought, fiddled with, and ultimately denied. Painters don't
have that luxury. If they go to a coffee shop, their paint dries into a
hard mass.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

I would like to recommend that all
writers live in California, because here, in between those moments when
one is looking into the heart of a rose, on can look up at the calming
blue sky. I feel sorry for writers - and there are some pretty famous ones
- who live in places like South American and Czechoslovakia, where I
imagine it gets pretty dank. These writers are easy to spot. Their books
are often filled with disease and negativity. If you're going to write
about disease, I would say California is the place to do it. Dwarfism is
never funny, but look at what happened when it was dealt with in
California. Seven happy dwarfs. Can you imagine seven dwarfs in
Czechoslovakia? You would get seven melancholic dwarfs at best - seven
melancholic dwarfs and no handicap-parking spaces.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA:
WHY IT'S A BAD TITLE

I admit that "Love in the time
of . . ." is a great title, up to a point. You're reading along,
you're happy, it's about love. I like the way the word time
comes in - a nice, nice feeling. Then the morbid Cholera appears. I
was happy till then. Why not "Love in the Time of the Blue, Blue,
Bluebirds"? "Love in the Time of Oozing Sores and Pustules"
is probably an earlier title the author used as he was writing in a
rat-infested tree house on an old Smith Corona. This writer, whoever he
is, could have used a couple of weeks in Pacific Daylight Time.

A LITTLE EXPERIMENT

I took the following passage, which
was no doubt written in some depressing place, and attempted to rewrite it
under the sunny influence of California:

Most people deceive themselves
with a pair of faiths: they believe in eternal memory (of people,
things, deeds, nations) and in redresibility (of deeds, mistakes,
sins, wrongs). Both are false faiths. In reality the opposite is true:
everything will be forgotten and nothing will be redressed. - Milan
Kundera.

Sitting in my garden, watching the
bees glide from flower to flower, I let the above paragraph filter through
my mind. The following New Paragraph emerged:

I feel pretty,

Oh so pretty,

I feel pretty, and witty, and
bright.

Kundera was just too wordy.
Sometimes the delete key is your best friend.

WRITER'S BLOCK: A MYTH

Writer's block is a fancy term made
up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol. Sure, a writer
can get stuck for a while, but when that happens to a real author - say, a
Socrates or a Rodman - he goes out and gets an "as told to." The
alternative is to hire yourself out as an "as heard from," thus
taking all the credit. The other trick I use when I have a momentary
stoppage is virtually foolproof, and I'm happy to pass it along. Go to an
already published novel and find a sentence that you absolutely adore.
Copy it down in your manuscript. Usually, that sentence will lead you to
another sentence, and pretty soon your own ideas will start to flow. If
they don't, copy down the next sentence in the novel. You can safely use
up to three sentences of someone else's work - unless you're friends, then
two. The odds of being found out are very slim, and even if you are
there's usually no jail time.

This is an example of what I call
"pure" Writing, which occurs when there is no possibility of its
becoming a screenplay. Pure writing is the most rewarding of all, because
it is constantly accompanied by a voice that repeats, "Why am I
writing this?" Then, and only then, can the writer hope for his
finest achievement: the voice of the reader uttering its complement,
"Why am I reading this?"